The video works characterize digitally mediated experience, both in the presence of interfaces which enforce it, and environments divorced from them, which can’t escape its effects. In the first work, Because the Internet 1, a juxtaposition of opposing elements — almost violently presented utopian seaside imagery turning into an intense storm and an alienating musical background shifting toward greater consonance, as the intensity increases — creates an onslaught of enticing, idealized visuals that become unbearably burdensome, even as the musical background becomes more harmonious. This intentional contrast forms a disconnected and discomforting atmosphere, as cohesion erodes under the force of digital mediation — Its presence surpassing its bounds, it begins to dictate experience even when its subject is not in the presence of its interface. 

Because the Internet 2 continues the conflicted affective state created through intentionally mismatched visuals and sound, while progressively breaking down into intense flashing. Momentary reprieves form raging flickers of nature become ever more subsumed by expressions of digital mediation. Mounting glitches compound as reality all but breaks down under the force of systems that institute them, finally dissolving and letting itself be supplanted fully by its digital equivalent. All that remains of the image is its effect, its experience is reduced to nothing more than pure attention retention—unencumbered yet burdensome, meant to, at once, engage and disengage.

The two-part installation presents, in the first room, an abstract filmic narrative expressed through a synesthetic audio-visual composition. Four synchronized screens perform a musical composition, visualizing the intensifying melodic, rhythmic, and narrative progression until reaching a stroboscopic climax. The work establishes the screen as a content delivery mechanism, with the incessant flashing forcefully capturing and retaining the viewer’s attention to the point of sensory overload.

In the second room, a representation of the video’s content is reproduced in an analog format. Eight columns funnel the viewer toward a bright reflector, echoing the characteristically digital experience of the first room. This setup inverts the course of narrative construction, as the digitally mediated expression becomes the initial experience, later replicated in physical form. All the while, the echoing sounds from the first room work to entrench the tactile experience as entirely inseparable from the digital.

The two-part installation presents conceptual plans for interior and exterior spaces, the former designed to attract, the latter to deter. In Table Plan 1, three artificial monstera plants are placed on an office desk under harsh spotlights, while Table Plan 2 presents models of cement casts that resemble elements of hostile architecture. Both tables present plans for subjugating the visitor, by exercising control over the affective state established in the space, demonstrating how the experience of physical space is mediated as its perception becomes dictated by a third party – an ideology.

The artificial comfort created by fake plants under overbearing white LED lights deliberately undermines itself, revealing it as an element as ideologically marked as the hostile elements in outdoor spaces designed to deter unwanted lingering. The static arrangements on office tables show how this ever-present alienation is an intentional, and planned on effect. The intertwined relationship between the two approaches results in aspects of highly intricate interior elements of dictating perception encroaching on exterior spaces, while signifiers of the dissolved natural exterior are cynically used to construct an inviting facade over artificial interior spaces.

Earlier video works based on the depiction of instituting digitally mediated affectivity. Using abstract color gradients and simple flashing screens, the two works, while sharing a visual language, create two distinctly different affective states. haiku establishes an emotionally charged, intense atmosphere that dissolves into a blissful, warm embrace. It establishes a narrative through the elementary use of moving abstract color and sound, echoing the structure of film in its basic form.

In contrast, Composition for 26,956,800 Pixels creates a casual and unchallenging yet intensely formulated atmosphere that is forcefully projected onto the subject through an array of screens. Both works reveal themselves as active determinants of the viewer’s experience. Be it intense or casual, in both cases it the viewer finds themselves subjugated to a specific experience, enforced by a digital medium and its interface.